Honest question for devs out there... is anyone worried? I don't see enough frank conversation happening around this subject. Timelines. How long until salaries fall? Is it too early to stalk thinking about back up plans? Am I crazy?
Coding is probably solved. Honestly it’s probably going to be 5 years of runtime starting now depending on industry lag and uptake.
A team I was managing spent a whole year converting government forms into a web app. It took a while and there was a lot of discussion with the end users and a bunch of back and forth (keep in mind this is government software with a lot of onerous legal requirements). Then about 4 months ago, we just fed Codex the forms, along with the UI design and the legal requirements and it spat it out in 1 hour. Was it perfect? No. But our iterative loop became make the web app, show it to end users and then incorporate feedback and completely cut out the UX team, product etc. We were able to complete the conversion in 2 weeks with one guy (something like 150+ government forms/applications). For most simple to medium corporate development work it’s basically over.
We're in a similar boat. Entire eng team went full AI about a year ago, and honestly we're struggling to find things to do. Features that would take weeks, take minutes.
I just don't see how we keep going like this without layoffs. The company cannot responsibly continue paying for this many engineers, when half, or less, could do the same job.
> honestly we're struggling to find things to do.
I have been the lone developer on a project for quite some time and was already feeling that way. Yet, recently found out that a second is being added to the team and a third is to come. I guess I'll enjoy what is effectively a paid vacation before it all comes crumbling down.
Serious question from a consumer of software: if software can be improved so effortlessly now, why isn't it getting better?
Like, why is it all still so buggy? Why does no website seem to consider 96 PPI displays in its design? Why don't we have ostensibly useful features like undo trees everywhere? Why is everything still a RAM hog? Why does the proportion of websites that pay no heed to accessibility seem to be going up rather than down?
I'm told we're living in the future, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
Lack of information. When you are on the building side you become blind to its faults. Consumers almost never tell you what isn't good about it.
> why is it all still so buggy?
Also lack of information. I haven't seen any bugs in years in the things I've worked on. LLMs have closed every last obvious testing gap, squashing any outstanding bugs there. That's not to say it is all bug-free now, but what bugs users may be experiencing aren't being reported.
AI is good at building software, but it is still not good at consuming software like actual consumers do.
For the same reason that increasing headcount never really solved the bug problem.
Flawless software isn't the goal, ever. Feature development is almost always the primary goal, and fixing bugs and performance issues is only done if the bug is bad enough.
I don't think you're wrong overall, and it jives with tripleee's reply, but I don't think wanting end-user software to be less buggy than it currently is is asking for "flawless" software.
Because the goal isn't to make the future better for humanity. It's to make the future more addictive for humanity. Big difference. More clicks, more ad views, more engagement, not necessarily more pleasant. I mean, that's obvious.
I live in the future when it comes to my hobby of music making. I make my own little software tools that I did not have the ability to make 2 years ago. Little tools that are too specialized and specific for my obscure taste to have much wider economic value as tools in themselves.
Claude is also the greatest obscure book recommendation engine I have ever found so I have a lot more interesting books to read than in the past.
Outside of this, I basically live in 2019 but everything is more expensive.
I worry this is the future. It doesn't really feel much different other than things getting more and more expensive.
If your company isn't throwing you into R&D right now everyone is looking at layoffs. You are no longer in an environment where doing "the same job" will keep you afloat.
I've said it before but I'll repeat it here until someone changes my mind: jobs in IT are safe until using AI gets its equivalent of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM". Until there can be financial and legal responsibility for when things go bad, people are going to be needed.
Once it's so good AI labs will be happy to accept liability, it's game over. It was never about code quality.
You're not crazy. I think there's still room for the top 5% of devs working on genuinely hard technical problems.. but I don't see a bright future for the rest.
No. Saas hedge is to offer solid api + mcp for agents to use whilst still maintaining their own products alongside. That's it, that's the whole thing.
Are you going to trust a vendor who has been running for years with your business critical operations or brad_69's awesome saas skills and agents? Do you think these businesses are going to shift their whole product to be in Altman's walled garden when they don't need to?
There’s going to be a lot of chaos at some point but I think that “hybrid builders” (scientists, sales people, product developers, etc). true specialists, and new opportunities in hw/robotics/training/ will soak up a lot of talent, and be rewarding to work in. Feels very sadly k-shaped.
Software engineering on one end is going to be more like finance or medicine where the cost of poor performance is actually higher than the risk that they wont be worth what you pay them (ie there isn’t any amount of pay where it’s worth it to hire them). Then on the other it’ll be like knowing how to use PowerPoint. All the new tech categories have too many bottlenecks and challenges beyond just producing code to consolidate like that.
Slapping up a slop website is no threat to professional tech folk.
When they have full DevOps, with multiple environments for testing, compliance with security best practices, can do database updates and data migrations, move the app smoothly between different platforms, streamline costs, and scale to at least hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of users without crashing and burning... then go ahead and worry. We aren't anywhere near that.
On the other hand, if you are purely a coder, and cannot run a project that does all of the above... maybe start your worrying earlier.
We aren't, but the AI Labs no doubt are. They just can't release it right now because their bread and butter is still developers burning tokens, so there is still a business problem to solve.
Salaries won't fall, they'll go up. The number of roles is what'll fall. SWE is going to become a giant game of musical chairs, and people who can't find a seat will get pushed into human facing roles ("product" / "technical sales" / "customer support" ).
It'd be hard to compete when there are too many sellers like you. In many businesses, data is the moat and network effects keep making them more valuable over time.
I think technically building this stuff is now easier for the masses. But knowing what to build, how to describe it, how to test it, figuring out how to understand the users -- that's the hard part, always was and I'll be employed doing that for a couple more years at least. But after that, I see this all going towards building for agents, building for users will be a thing of the past. Then I think its not as easy for people to relate to that, probably want a machine designing for other machines. UX and taste don't really matter much at that point.
No, you should be thinking about backup plans, because you should assume you’re not going to walk into another career (I am not suggesting that you are).
- People in other industries actually have specialist knowledge (this is something IT people forget)
- AI is coming for those jobs too
- and so are lots of other people, not just displaced techies but from any number of other industries.
Thinking about it in advance should include training yourself up for other sectors.
If AI is successful, it will be a very different world of jobhunting. If it’s unsuccessful there will still be job losses for a while because of overspending, and because of the wider economic issues.
It is not clear to me that it is yet at a level of success to cause massive tech job losses (it's just causing large-scale misery).
It's also not clear to me that the level of success in the tech industry is truly being repeated anywhere else. There are industries where generative AI is actually a liability (the law, finance) and where it is increasingly viewed as repugnant (design, the arts, to some extent photography where deep learning noise reduction tools are OK but the culture is swinging hard against other generative uses).
I am also not convinced it is "objectively" successful in the tech industry, considering the extent to which most token pricing is subsidised and people's reluctance to demonstrate ROI even on subsidised/bundled tokens.
I'm not claiming it is unsuccessful. Just that I don't think the job apocalypse is here yet. Though this product (ChatGPT Sites) is very indicative of a coming tech job apocalypse in pure software services.
It's certainly at a level of success where people should start thinking about a "Go bag" on an employment level. Keep your CV up to date, work on gaps in non-tech skills, consider other qualifications.
bananaflag · · focus · HN ↗
copperx · · focus · HN ↗
jr3592 · · focus · HN ↗
dyauspitr · · focus · HN ↗
A team I was managing spent a whole year converting government forms into a web app. It took a while and there was a lot of discussion with the end users and a bunch of back and forth (keep in mind this is government software with a lot of onerous legal requirements). Then about 4 months ago, we just fed Codex the forms, along with the UI design and the legal requirements and it spat it out in 1 hour. Was it perfect? No. But our iterative loop became make the web app, show it to end users and then incorporate feedback and completely cut out the UX team, product etc. We were able to complete the conversion in 2 weeks with one guy (something like 150+ government forms/applications). For most simple to medium corporate development work it’s basically over.
bushbaba · · focus · HN ↗
dyauspitr · · focus · HN ↗
bushbaba · · focus · HN ↗
jr3592 · · focus · HN ↗
I just don't see how we keep going like this without layoffs. The company cannot responsibly continue paying for this many engineers, when half, or less, could do the same job.
win311fwg · · focus · HN ↗
I have been the lone developer on a project for quite some time and was already feeling that way. Yet, recently found out that a second is being added to the team and a third is to come. I guess I'll enjoy what is effectively a paid vacation before it all comes crumbling down.
creata · · focus · HN ↗
Like, why is it all still so buggy? Why does no website seem to consider 96 PPI displays in its design? Why don't we have ostensibly useful features like undo trees everywhere? Why is everything still a RAM hog? Why does the proportion of websites that pay no heed to accessibility seem to be going up rather than down?
I'm told we're living in the future, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
tripleee · · focus · HN ↗
win311fwg · · focus · HN ↗
Lack of information. When you are on the building side you become blind to its faults. Consumers almost never tell you what isn't good about it.
> why is it all still so buggy?
Also lack of information. I haven't seen any bugs in years in the things I've worked on. LLMs have closed every last obvious testing gap, squashing any outstanding bugs there. That's not to say it is all bug-free now, but what bugs users may be experiencing aren't being reported.
AI is good at building software, but it is still not good at consuming software like actual consumers do.
copperx · · focus · HN ↗
jr3592 · · focus · HN ↗
Flawless software isn't the goal, ever. Feature development is almost always the primary goal, and fixing bugs and performance issues is only done if the bug is bad enough.
creata · · focus · HN ↗
FeteCommuniste · · focus · HN ↗
Like the old quip that a cup of coffee lets you do stupid things faster.
vouaobrasil · · focus · HN ↗
aryehof · · focus · HN ↗
rl3 · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzm6pvHPSGo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzm6pvHPSGo
lutanista · · focus · HN ↗
I live in the future when it comes to my hobby of music making. I make my own little software tools that I did not have the ability to make 2 years ago. Little tools that are too specialized and specific for my obscure taste to have much wider economic value as tools in themselves.
Claude is also the greatest obscure book recommendation engine I have ever found so I have a lot more interesting books to read than in the past.
Outside of this, I basically live in 2019 but everything is more expensive.
I worry this is the future. It doesn't really feel much different other than things getting more and more expensive.
gopher_space · · focus · HN ↗
aduwah · · focus · HN ↗
bartekrutkowski · · focus · HN ↗
tripleee · · focus · HN ↗
ActionHank · · focus · HN ↗
Are you going to trust a vendor who has been running for years with your business critical operations or brad_69's awesome saas skills and agents? Do you think these businesses are going to shift their whole product to be in Altman's walled garden when they don't need to?
weitendorf · · focus · HN ↗
Software engineering on one end is going to be more like finance or medicine where the cost of poor performance is actually higher than the risk that they wont be worth what you pay them (ie there isn’t any amount of pay where it’s worth it to hire them). Then on the other it’ll be like knowing how to use PowerPoint. All the new tech categories have too many bottlenecks and challenges beyond just producing code to consolidate like that.
vlucas · · focus · HN ↗
codingdave · · focus · HN ↗
When they have full DevOps, with multiple environments for testing, compliance with security best practices, can do database updates and data migrations, move the app smoothly between different platforms, streamline costs, and scale to at least hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of users without crashing and burning... then go ahead and worry. We aren't anywhere near that.
On the other hand, if you are purely a coder, and cannot run a project that does all of the above... maybe start your worrying earlier.
win311fwg · · focus · HN ↗
We aren't, but the AI Labs no doubt are. They just can't release it right now because their bread and butter is still developers burning tokens, so there is still a business problem to solve.
rl3 · · focus · HN ↗
That said, getting a frontier model self-improvement harness to work correctly end-to-end isn't trivial.
CuriouslyC · · focus · HN ↗
swader999 · · focus · HN ↗
bharatsuthar · · focus · HN ↗
swader999 · · focus · HN ↗
dofm · · focus · HN ↗
- People in other industries actually have specialist knowledge (this is something IT people forget)
- AI is coming for those jobs too
- and so are lots of other people, not just displaced techies but from any number of other industries.
Thinking about it in advance should include training yourself up for other sectors.
If AI is successful, it will be a very different world of jobhunting. If it’s unsuccessful there will still be job losses for a while because of overspending, and because of the wider economic issues.
dofm · · focus · HN ↗
Sorry, I switched senses in the middle of this.
Should have written either:
"because you should not assume you’re going to walk into another career (I am not suggesting that you are)"
or something like
"because you should assume you’re not going to walk into another career (I am not suggesting that you think you might)"
Need to write my posts less hurriedly.
ryan_n · · focus · HN ↗
dofm · · focus · HN ↗
It's also not clear to me that the level of success in the tech industry is truly being repeated anywhere else. There are industries where generative AI is actually a liability (the law, finance) and where it is increasingly viewed as repugnant (design, the arts, to some extent photography where deep learning noise reduction tools are OK but the culture is swinging hard against other generative uses).
I am also not convinced it is "objectively" successful in the tech industry, considering the extent to which most token pricing is subsidised and people's reluctance to demonstrate ROI even on subsidised/bundled tokens.
I'm not claiming it is unsuccessful. Just that I don't think the job apocalypse is here yet. Though this product (ChatGPT Sites) is very indicative of a coming tech job apocalypse in pure software services.
It's certainly at a level of success where people should start thinking about a "Go bag" on an employment level. Keep your CV up to date, work on gaps in non-tech skills, consider other qualifications.
internet2000 · · focus · HN ↗
Hopefully you've been living below your means and saving.
wingworks · · focus · HN ↗
OtomotO · · focus · HN ↗
If I can't work as a computer scientist anymore (I am my own business since many years), I'll simply do something else.
I have many interests and "talents".
Maybe I can work as a gardener, or I help the farmers around, or I do some social work, or I work as a garbage man, or I ...
I am not worried in the slightest on a personal level.
Society might crumble though.
But then again, was it ever more than barbarism in disguise?